Public Sector

A former MP who fraudulently used taxpayers' money to fund his cocaine habit has had a bid to appeal his sentence denied.

Jared O'Mara, who was the MP for Sheffield Hallam, was jailed for four years in February after being convicted of six counts of fraud.

The 41-year-old had tried to claim £52,000 of taxpayers' money for constituency work that was never done and jobs that did not exist.

Focus must shift to prevention, PAC warns, after the body responsible for overseeing government expenditure calls for action to tackle currently untracked fraud and error losses of potentially tens of billions of pounds a year.

https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2023/sep-2023/government-must-lead-from-top-on-fraud-pac-urges

Drivers are being warned to avoid fraudulent garages who perform illegal MOTs, as the government is cracking down on them.

Total counts of MOT Fraud reached 1324 last year, 2021-2022, 710 of those, were the most serious cases relating to dishonesty and negligence, a 102% increase from those found in 2017-2018.

https://londonlovesbusiness.com/motorists-are-being-warned-to-avoid-fraudulent-garages-who-perform-illegal-mots/

The government has already had to foot a £7.4bn bill to settle bad loans with banks claiming a further £1.13bn, amid an “uncomfortable” level of fraud.

With £2.23bn more in arrears and £750m in default, taxpayers could be on the hook for total of £11.5bn from Covid-era loans, according to figures from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The government is “flying blind” on its exposure to fraud, which has quadrupled since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, MPs have said.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said that while most of the £21bn of taxpayers’ money lost to fraud during the pandemic is unlikely to be recovered, the government should be doing more to recoup what it can.

MPs say just 1.9% of £1.1bn wrongly lent to small business has been recovered.

The Department for Business and Trade has been told to get detailed figures for the cost of recovering more than £960m in Covid support packages for small business that is still outstanding after being wrongly paid out in the early months of the pandemic.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/dbt-told-to-detail-cost-of-recovering-covid-loan-fraud-losses

Ministers have only recovered around £20m of the more than £1bn lost to Covid fraud in the three years since the start of the pandemic, a high-profile group of MPs has said.

Parliament’s public accounts committee (PAC) which scrutinises the value for money of government projects, has unveiled a report into the losses from business support schemes.

Two former employees of Bristol Waste have “voluntarily” attended interviews by Avon and Somerset Police in relation to possible fraud within a waste depot.

The allegations against the pair came to light earlier this year (see letsrecycle.com story). Bristol Waste confirmed at the time that it “became aware” of “possible fraudulent activity” in 2020, and passed this on to the Police.

https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/police-question-former-bristol-waste-staff-over-possible-fraud/

Transport for London (TfL) says it has found no evidence of fraud within its own ranks, as reports emerged of criminals offering drivers a way of avoiding Ultra low emission zone (Ulez) charges.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/tfl-finds-no-fraud-among-160048507.html/

The Department for Work and Pensions is considering outsourcing as many as 2,500 new jobs to deliver Universal Credit targeted case review work.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com//professions/article/dwp-proposes-outsourcing-2500-jobs